


Roving

by tendderpreyyy



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Sad Ending, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 08:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18117305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tendderpreyyy/pseuds/tendderpreyyy
Summary: Fly is used to drinking alone, now being the only exception in recent memory.“ So, are you in then? Can we count on you, as an accomplice? Been needing a gilt for ages, really rounds out the mob.” His voice is smooth, worn and comfortable like an old, creaking boot. An Upright Man if Fly’s ever seen one, leaning up against the bar of the Belching Bilby like he owns the place; his single eye rolls up, shows the underside, white as milk, then back down to look at her. A curiously invisible pupil, swallowed by a cornea so dark it may as well be black. “ Been beating my head out for near a year trying to scrape together enough rovers to help with this racket.”





	Roving

**Author's Note:**

> Another OC extravaganza and pet project. An incredibly bloated one-shot, shedding some much needed light on Fly's backstory. This took a lot longer than I thought it would, but it was a story that needed to be told a certain way. 
> 
> Also, operating under the assumption that Junkertown is built out of pieces of the Omnium, but not on top of the ruins. 
> 
> Thank you anyone who reads it!

In Amsterdam there lived a maid. Bless you young maiden  
In Amsterdam there lived a maid, Mark well what I do say  
In Amsterdam there lived a maid And she was the mistress of her trade.  
We'll go no more a-roving with you fair maid.  
A roving, A roving, since roving’s been my ruin  
We'll go no more a-roving with you fair maid.

I met this fair maid after dark Bless you young maiden  
I met this fair maid after dark, Mark well what I do say  
I met this fair maid after dark She took me to her favourite park.  
We'll go no more a-roving with you fair maid.  
A roving, A roving, since roving’s been my ruin  
We'll go no more a-roving with you fair maid.

I put my arm around her waist Bless you young maiden  
I put my arm around her waist, Mark well what I do say  
I put my arm around her waist Said she, young man you're in great haste.  
We'll go no more a-roving with you fair maid.  
A roving, A roving, since roving’s been my ruin  
We'll go no more a-roving with you fair maid.

 

~

Fly is used to drinking alone, now being the only exception in recent memory.

“ So, are you in then? Can we count on you, as an accomplice? Been needing a gilt for ages, really rounds out the mob.” His voice is smooth, worn and comfortable like an old, creaking boot. An Upright Man if Fly’s ever seen one, leaning up against the bar of the Belching Bilby like he owns the place; his single eye rolls up, shows the underside, white as milk, then back down to look at her. A curiously invisible pupil, swallowed by a cornea so dark it may as well be black. “ Been beating my head out for near a year trying to scrape together enough rovers to help with this racket.”

“ Didn't think there was any shortage of us.” Fly doesn't move, nurses her cup in a way she hopes looks thoughtful, keeps the excitement out of her voice and remembers not to sound too desperate. ‘ Times are hard for a lone wolf, harder than cold iron. Secure and sure, you get every last bit to yourself moving your loot. But a real chance at a job this big, that don't fall into a lap when you’re on your lonesome.’

“ No shortage, but we don’t want just any filcher with a pulse. A warm body ain’t enough to get us in out that-a-ways. Around the Om is special dangerous, all sorts of weirdness abound. So, we need a light who’ll not clam up when the mo’ comes to us. This is bigger than visitin’ the neighbors, or moving the odd bit of contraband. ”

“ So what is it I’ll be risking a broken finger for? All of us ending up scratched or worse, probably worse, and for what?” Fly talks, watches the sediment move in the brownish liquid within her glass, settling along the bottom until she can’t make out the woodgrain of the bar anymore. She thinks about times she’s skirted the Omnium, how the terrain gets more and more unfriendly the further inland you move, until flat blasted ground gives way to furrows deep enough they’ll swallow Utes and any other manner of transport, her leg bounces nervously at the memory. “ It’ll be rough going, rougher most like, than any of yours have had. You’re all a real outfit, eh? City going sneaks who’ve made a good name.”

“Careful now, draw latch... Could hurt a lad’s feelings jawing like that. I know we’re up to our ears and out of our element, that’s why I put out the feelers one such as yourself, one who knows the back country as an old friend. We’re on the hunt for a special bit of metal, a box or something like, sealed up tighter than a bugs arse since the whole place went tits up. I’d tell you not to ask ‘why’ or ‘who wants it’ but I’d wager your professional enough to know that bit.” His dark hair sags forward, over his forehead when he cracks his neck. His breathing syncs with Fly’s own as she huffs around a sip, around the rim of her glass. His foot taps a similar fidgety rhythm on the dirty floor beside hers, an answering beat to her own body’s strange sort of morse code; they’re communicating on another level, suddenly.

Fly recognizes she’s being paced, that he’s using a con man’s tactic on her. She moves her hand down to her lap, and twenty odd seconds later he’s doing something similar and moving one gnarled hand down to tap his own denim encased thigh. Making her feel comfortable, looking at her actions through someone else, like a kindred spirit.

“ ‘You’d wager’... So you’re saying you haven’t heard of me? How do you know I’m good for it I wonder?” She digs, and leans back in her stool to take in the full measure of him, the first one of her new partners she’s met.

“ Haven’t heard a word about you, but I see your prints on all the old haunts. The market’s change when you blow in, watched some capitol lost from the big guns. Know you been in it for a few years serious, before that, mums the word.” He leans back, stares at her with one eye. “ My honor to nab you first for my mob, catch me?”

“ You’re right about that one.” Fly smiles at him, waits for him to smile back right on cue. ‘ He’s a real pigeon plucker... Moving like me to get me to like him, getting me to trust him.’ “ It is your honor to nab me. And in return, I’ll help you nab that queer little box we’re bound for.”

She’s not too proud to admit what he’s doing is working.

~

Fly finds them all the next day at the edge of Junkertown, numbering five with her included. First they're huddled around a fire like vagrants, all stooped shoulders with arms curling in around themselves like a mother’s hug. The morning is cold and windblown. Upon her approach, one of them turns, clad in a long coat and heavy knee kissing boots, another young woman with short hair, bright yellow as a chunk of sulphur.

“ Hail, hail, the gang’s all here. I’m Josephine, you must be our resident charm. I’m the fat lady, if there’s any skulls to break, don’t waste those nimble fingers doing it yourself... Otherwise, what the hell is my share even for?”

Fly puts her palms up in surrender, moving just to the left of Josephine, standing just behind the group. “Nice to meet you Jo, I’ll let you know if anyone needs killing on my end. I been told we’re all traveling there together by Dimber. ”

Hearing his name, the one eyed, old-hand she spoke to last night turns a bit, gives her a jaunty half wave.

They’re off in the morning, with the first orange and pink light creeping across the land like long fingers, reaching far as the eye can see. The desert had cooled during the night, now properly cold. Fly steps over the footpad up to the backseat of the ute, planting her foot on the running board straight from the ground. Chill leeches into her joints, through her boots, through her jumper, and through her hat; a vice starts to pinch just behind her left eye and doesn't let up.

The motley group moves nearly as one, four of them packed into the ute, while Josephine rides ahead on a quacker with wide, thick wheels; conquering the terrain easily.

Fly finds herself sitting astride the lap of a stranger, cramming multiple bodies in the back, along with gear would take a pry-bar otherwise. He stares out the window, watches the rise and fall of the land, endless brownish red waves broken with large metal chunks pushing towards the sky. Some of them are bigger than houses, thrown far and wide by the force of the Om so many years ago.

She stares at the line of his nose, a scar between his eyes where the skin split long ago and never realigned properly. The exposed skin of his face is dark as her own and spattered with freckles of all shapes and sizes, like he’s been with flecked of oil. The rest of him a mystery, clad up to his chin and down to his ankles in a cowl and loose sweater.

“ Humble.” He says it, not looking at her.

“ Hm?” Fly watches his mouth form around it, then, pull to one side a bit.

“ Name’s Humble; and yours is Fly.” He tells her, flat and matter of fact. “ Since we’ll be birds of a feather, according to Dimber, seemed only right to tell.”

Fly feels him shift below her, solid, warm, and alive. “ Pleasure to hear it. Dimber’s the arch, sure enough. But what’s your talent?” She watches his eyes, big and green, finally look at her.

“ Penny-weighting, in case we’ve got a sensor out there still live. Got the fastest hand at replacing goods this side, keep us from getting locked in. Do you know if any of it’s still functional?” Humble asks.

“ Dunno truth be told, I circled the whole outside, been in and out of the storage sheds. But I never went into the main building.” Fly says.

“ Because you never had a crew for back up?”

“ Too right, always been a solo act. But it’s too dangerous for just one, down there. Who knows what’s hidden away...” Fly looks up at the roof over their heads, counts the bolts heads holding the rack above.

“ Between us all, we’ll find out.” Humble sounds sure, he shifts again, pitches Fly to the left with the action nearly cracking her forehead against the window. “Sorry. That’s Strath next to us; may as well introduce the little bastard, since we’d grow old waiting for him to do it. He was a loner like you, picked up the little mixmaster on a trade route. He hasn’t looked back since.”

Fly glances at Strath, his curling hair looks wet in the early light and there’s enough of it to obscure most of his features, except his thin, drawn mouth. He doesn’t look back at her, keeps his gaze lowered into the running board.

“ Well, no one likes being lonely, happens to the best of us. There's no shame in that.” She says, with no one saying anything back.

Even crammed into the ute with the others, Fly still feels a chill and twinge of something, a roiling in her guts. Maybe she’s had a bad bit of jerky last night.

“You should throw out that bit of... Possum, or is it rabbit?” Strath says is, takes a deep inhale of the air. Reaches over Humble, taking her hand gently in his own and dragging it back to his face to smell her fingers. “ Neither, it’s rat. Don’t have any more of it, anyhow, we have plenty of grub.”

“ Brown or black rat?” Fly asks, her sickness bedded down in favor of curiosity.

“ Neither, it’s a field rat.” Strath examines her knuckles once more, then tries to release her hand.

Her fingers stay tangled with his, she peeks at his eyelashes lowering to touch his cheeks. Her nipples are getting hard when she asks, “ If you’re so good, bloodhound, what did I have for breakfast before I got here?”

Two heartbeats worth of silence follows, then Strath sniffs again, this time his lips touch her knuckles when he says, “ Oat cakes, and goat milk.”

Fly leans towards him, forgets about Humble who still isn’t saying anything and moves her ponytail off of her neck because suddenly she’s burning up. Moving both their hands up to her nose, she notices only her own warm skin first then the warning tang of chemicals and death; Strath smells toxic and strange. Her mouth fills with saliva when she thinks,

‘ None of that sounds very romantic...’

She tells him anyway.

~

There’s no greying at the twilight tonight, the three kilometers surrounding the omnium are still awash with a strange sort of glow. Soaking everything in an eerie sort of highlight that doesn’t seem to emanate from any direction in particular. Fly is especially grateful for her goggles in that moment. The air seems to vibrate and hum with energy, a storm permanently brewing, a storm that had already broken twenty some odd years back and just wasn’t done yet. The top of the Omnium, or what’s left of it, looms ahead, a burst open carcass and ripe for vultures like them.

‘What we want is beneath that big pimple, buried special deep.’ Fly touches the kit in her pocket, counts each and every piece by muscle memory alone. The same way she’s taking each first step before the rest of them.

“ We’ll wait to do our business til cover of darkness.” Dimber announces it, bringing up the rear of the party; while the vehicles get smaller and smaller behind him.

“ It always looks like that here. This is dark, dark as it ever gets.” Fly tells him plaintively, “ Drives me mad. Should try getting shut eye around here...”

“ Rather not. In and out is the plan.” Humble gripes, rubs his own eyes. Looking over Fly sees they’re beginning to water already, swollen slightly and sick seeming. “ Something in the air here don’t agree with me. Don’t agree with any living creature I’d wager... Worse than the gut wagons.”

“ Almost as bad as the sick quarter back home.” Josephine quips, everyone makes a face in agreement.

Approaching the way Fly always had, from the north east; even if it took longer. They move first past a manmade pond of some sort, filled to the brim with some kind of water that never did seem to evaporate. As a general rule she had avoided any contact with it, didn’t even throw a rock into the strange pool. Silence envelops the party when they pass the first of the small outbuildings, the windows that remain are so caked with dirt you can only tell them due to the frames. Some of them seem to glow from within, like burning ethanol.

“ What the fuck?” Dimber says, quietly even though it’s only the five of them.

Directly in their path now is a glass kiosk, still whole and unharmed, seemingly forgotten by disaster. Dimber and Strath give it a wide berth, but the others crowd around to stare while Fly points at the desk inside, the little pencils, organizers, and even a lone coffee mug still there lined up like soldiers but covered in some hairy sort of filth.

“ Look at that, ever seen something like that?” She gesticulates an explosion, makes a noise in her cheeks, ‘poof’. “ Looks nearly clean as a whistle, like they just left and forgot about it. Instead of blowing it all sky-high.”

The only give-away, anything went wrong at all is the broken and jagged toll arm, jutting over the warped pavement. They all move around it, slinking and silent. The blown open top of the Omnium is huge and looming closer now.

A small barricade of twisted metal sits in the middle of the path, with two cruel protrusions reaching up to the torn open sky and the other two dug into crumbling blacktop.

“ Ha, look at that, ‘X’ marks the spot!” Fly announces it to Humble beside her, with tears making shiny tracks down his cheeks. He doesn't say anything, barely looks up to notice; his breathing is shallow and poor.

“ Like a pirate treasure.” Strath’s mellow voice answers her instead, “ Good thing we have a guide to our piece of eight.”

“ Arr...” Josephine growls, then laughs at the whole scene.

“ Already got the eyepatch covered,” Dimber muses, “ Who knew I been fit for this job for my whole bloody life?”

After that the going gets worse. The closer they draw to the main building, the heavier the air becomes. Josephine complains about the stink, with Dimber agreeing, then he complainins about how much their gear set them all back, even though he didn’t spring for masks. A mistake by all accounts if anyone asked Fly, which, luckily, no one does.

The remains of an ornamental garden turn to dust and sticks beneath their feet, just more dirt on top of dirt. The sound of Humble’s teeth chattering becomes deafening, running on and on, mingling with the hum in the air. Fly can barely breathe for the sound of it and by the time a gust of wind takes one of the broken, prickly, brown bushes and throws it before them she steps on it just to hear something else.

“ Shut up,” She says it under her breath, tired of the whinging, of walking with the sounds of other footsteps. ‘This is why I work alone. All this bloody noise setting off alarm bells in my head. Can’t properly hear a thing...’

She’s the only one who hears it though, the same humming, changed to a rumble now that tickles everything from the tips of her toes to the end of her nose. Interrupting itself periodically with a winding silence that is somehow more worrying.

“ Shut up you bastards!” Fly hisses it, starts moving faster, with her eyes fixated now on a red sign a dozen meters ahead.

‘STOP’ it says, but everyone just tucks a bit lower to the ground, keeps moving with their eyes ahead. Fly feels them eyeing her back when electricity crackles through the air. Like it’s her fault they're all out in the open and in the middle of whatever this is.

‘ You’re all too green outside city limits. Too bloody green, too scared and too slow.’ Fly resists the urge to run, hide to the right of their current path under a pile of leftover garbage; low to the ground and safe like an insect. Small enough nothing will notice her.

It builds in the air, a ringing in the collective ears of everyone and reaching a frenzied crescendo. There’s a glow intensifying from the middle of the Omnium, a nightlight further polluting the darkness. At the first crackle, Josephine swears, and Fly feels them all startle like a herd of goats. By the second the fear is palpable, and she can hear Dimber talking low to the others, keeping them all in line, from bolting.

“ Get down now,” She says leading by example, crouching low enough her ass touches her ankles. “ Just... Wait, wait it out.”

“ Wait what out exactly?” Humble asks, sounding scared.

“ Shut the fuck up, who cares what it is?” Dimber says.

Fly closes her eyes, she doesn’t tell any of them, and they don't see her do it behind the goggles.

The discharge is like a clap of thunder, loud as if someone had driven a road train over the their heads. With a glow like wildfire coming from everywhere at once, then suddenly it’s gone.

The air winds down again, Fly straightens out, and everyone follows suit.

“ Don’t rightly know if my eyes will ever be straight after that...” Strath rubs his face, lingers on his eyes and pushes against them with the heel of his hand.

“ Guess someone left the lights on in there, huh?” Josephine jokes, dusting off her knees.

Nobody laughs and they keep moving.

~

Inside the main door, there’s a thicket of some sort. Bony branches reaching and grasping at them and standing so tall nobody could get a proper view. Sprouted out of decorative pots and gone awry with the fallen away roof letting in too much sunlight and pouring in rain. There's a directory to the right, still shockingly legible, once the dust was wiped away. They have the heading, but it meant crawling, belly down and under the bushes first to pass.

It takes longer than she’d like, with Josephine nearly dragging the whole bit of shrub with her when it hooks onto her jacket and Humble stopping to rest his face against the cool tile.

“ How many times have you been here? How do you know your way so well? ” Dimber asks Fly, drinks from his canteen with deep gulps before getting up, waiting for her answer.

She scratches her head, “Just the once. Got a good head for layouts, and I looked at the directory for this place till I was crosseyed. Even if I never had the stones to come back by my lonesome.” Standing now, looking away at the series of doors in front of them. She selects one marked with with the words ‘maintenance’.

“ Is it true anyone who comes here changes? Acclimates to the conditions. Is it true some end up staying, searching and digging through trash here for months at a time? Sometimes forever...” Dimber continues, sounding like he really doesn’t want to hear the answer.

“ Dunno, I suppose if you’ve got the guts for it. Myself, I just grabbed a boatload of old batteries and parts could be carried. Didn't end up transmogrified into a mutie or nothing, think that’s just rumours.” She keeps moving, hitches her shoulders up at the feeling of being studied. ‘ Steady on. No grumbling now, was you who agreed, knew what you signed up for.’ She looks back at Dimber, sees him watching her through one squinted eye. Behind him Humble has a hand on the railing, scraping up dirt, Strath skips a stair at a time, curling hair bouncing with each step, and Josephine moves up last with her hand on the shotgun at her hip.

Fly blinks, like she can take a picture, wishing she could with the way Strath’s body extends, narrow hipped and narrow shouldered. ‘Didn’t ask for the distraction.’ She thinks peevishly, suddenly embarrassed when her foot twists in a pile of rags she stepped right into. Fly remembers the last time she had a root, barely, filtered through the hazy look of of rotgut alcohol. Purely transactional though she had hoped it would be fun too, a common occurrence in the lower districts; she doesn't feel anything about it. A spot of numbness, hard in her throat, like hunger. Similar to when she would chew on leather and hope for the taste of meat. It was brown and wrinkled like food, so she always shoved it into her mouth, sucked on it. And every time she was terribly disappointed- even so, it was always instantly forgotten, not forgotten really; but she refused to accept the memory of wet, tasteless leather and always did it again and again.

A sound starts to fill the air, getting louder with each step forward. Mournful and long, sad, but not heart stopping the way the rumbling had been. Echoing down the hall they found themselves in and through their bones. Emergency fans are shaking in steel cages above their heads, still on since the disaster, still cycling, and still circulating the air.

“ Stop.” She tells them, watching a lump of something, irregularly shaped and heaped against the wall.

They do, Josephine taking point and unloading two slugs into it. The gunshot ricochets around her ears, but the shots sink in hard. The heap shudders, makes the sound again.

“ Just Om’s. A whole load of them, left here to rot and not even finished off. Just... torn up, did some animal do this?” Josephine looks rattled.

“ Not even critters would touch this. Don’t worry, no one really to shoot at in here. I didn't see anything outside, before this even, except rats.” Fly says it softly, tries to sound reassuring, but the whole time she’s looking at the mangled pile of parts and half lit optics, watching them track her movement but not doing anything. With limbs either torn open or beaten until they’re nearly flat.

“ Keep on then,” Dimber grouses, “ Look, I can see light down there.”

A metallic smelling fog swirls, seems to melt over their boots when they cross the threshold; automatic double doors lying about on the floor like nests of broken safety glass, twisted and wrenched out of their tracks by some unknown force.

The words on one side read ‘ CONTROL ROOM’.

“ Here we are lads, if it’s still here; it’ll be in this room or I’ll be a monkeys’ uncle.” Dimber claps a hand around Josephine’s shoulder to his left, and Humble’s to his right. Leading them in as a unit like he owns the place. It’s lined with dead consoles on three of it’s four sides, one wall is mostly bare but stacked near to the ceiling with crates. They all split up, covering the area like ants searching for sugar.

There’s a padlocked gun cabinet to the immediate left, though it’s almost certainly just filled with stunners and rubber bullets. Fly decides to scrub it anyway, lets the others fan out and search the room for that little box.

Tension wrench in hand, she finds the correct pressure quickly, like an old friend. The first pin beginning to bind, she pushes it past the shear line. Up and out, she feels the lock turning, ever so slightly, like the littlest puff of air. The plug stops on the next binding pin, thus the cycle begins anew.

“ Just like that, lickety split!” She murmurs, swinging open the door with barely a creak. The weapons inside are just what she expected, and she passes over them with nary a look; reaches for the first aid kit in the shelf above and shoves it into her bag with little ceremony. Not bothering to ask if it goes in the communal pot or no.

Somewhere behind her, she hears the others moving things about, probably breaking some of them.

“ Ah! There we are, aren't we beautiful.” Dimber’s tones are pleasant, greedy and high in the mostly empty room. “ Fly, Humble! Be needing you over here right about now.”

There’s pipes above them racing in a neat, albeit dust covered, line. She wonders about them, but doesn't think further than that. Her kit tucked back in her hand when she wanders back over to the others.

Behind the crates, there was a metal frame housing with a plaque above it saying ‘READOUTS’. From where it’s anchored on the wall, Fly can see there’s some sort of electricity feeding into it; to the lock or whatever is inside she isn't sure.

“ Get in there, freshie. Time to show us what you’re made of... Don’t tell me you’re shy?” Dimber pokes at her.

“ No chance. Dunno if it’s charged up, not about to get sent across the room. Have your penny-weighter check us first. Said he’s good with sensors, anyhow.” Her kit stays in her palm, her head stays high.

“ You heard her, Humble. Put our new friend’s mind at ease...”

Humble works fast and quiet, save for his huffing and puffing. Opening up the casing for the wires on the wall and separating them, snipping some and leaving others. Fly can't understand how he does it, with his eyes nearly swollen completely shut.

“ Done, now let’s get the fucking thing and be done with it... Feels like something’s sitting on my chest here. Breathing poorly as a cleft jaw dog ever since we’ve arrived.” Humble steps back, wipes his face on the sleeve of his sweater.

Fly can smell his sweat when she moves in to get to work herself, can hear him wheezing.

The moment she doesn’t hear any of the pins falling back, she feels like shouting. She settles for a wide smile, turning to face them, “ Who wants the honors? Who’s gonna carry the thing?”

Dimber steps forward, with his single remaining eye shining. While Fly moves to stand beside Strath, following his eyes to where he’s staring, straight up at that collection of pipes above them.

“ We should leave soon, very soon.” Strath breathes out, breathes in shallow. “Something here is leaking, badly, and I think we’re close to the source.”

Josephine squints at him, says, “ I don't think so, don't smell shit. Or feel funny.”

“ Humble’s been raggedy since we’ve arrived. Everyone is different, and mind, he’s the shortest. I... Think being away from the ground helps.” Strath looks up again, points to the pipes. “ I think they’ve been fractured. Whatever’s inside is eking out and rolling along the floor.”

At that mention, Dimber motions to the door.

Now that they have what they came for, leaving is faster than arriving. By the time they’re back to the thicket in the lobby, Humble lists badly to the left while walking and Josephine is rubbing her eyes so fiercely she’s bruised them both. Dimber has a bandana and his free hand slapped over his nose and mouth, with the other safely clamped around the black box under his arm. Fly and Strath bring up the rear, walking so close their shoulders touch with every other step.

‘Two stars orbiting one another... Don't remember what those are called. Too close, too close, don't shit where you live.’ Fly tries to remember why it isn't a good idea to make eyes at another thief, how the only thing that gets her going is another dishonest rounder like her; and she’s a bullshit artist buying a bigger pile willingly.

“After all’s said and done, we owe you one for getting us in. I owe you.” Strath doesn't look at her when he talks, but she feels pinned like a butterfly when he opens his mouth. “I’m buying your rounds when we get back. Or any other poison you like, or I could whip one up just for you...”

He grabs her hand then, bringing it up to his lips like before, but instead of smelling his dry lips scrape the top of her palm. “I feel like this is the start of something beautiful...”  
  
Strath drops her hand low, doesn't let go when he hollers up ahead, “ Dimber, mate,”

“Hm?”

“Which one of our ride’s has a bigger backseat?” At the question, Fly’s warm breath is fogging up her goggles, out of her mouth like she’s desperate for air and not something else entirely.

“ The QX50, it’s back in town, and whatever for?”

“ No reason. Just wondering...”

~

Four months later, Fly’s richer than she's ever been; beyond imagining. Dimber selling that box off to a woman who was distinctly not a Junker, while the rest of them watched from a faraway table at The Bilby was the best windfall that’s ever happened. The night after the sale, she and Strath walked back to a car that was bigger and older than both of them combined and spent the night alone.

She’s alone now as well, hurling her breakfast into one corner of the alley,  
‘Good thing I’m still living off my share, between jobs, for this fucking illness.’ Fly heaves again, hard enough her eyes water. ‘ Been plaguing me straight, nearly since the bloody job.’

Her gut tells her it’s to do with that place, that she’s rad sick and dying, shutting down inside while her innards melt away and come out both ends of her. She tells Dimber as much, when she finds him spinning a yarn to some pretty thing at the end of the bar.

“ No one else is off, not even poor Humble with how bad of shape he was there. Sure you’re not just dope sick from whatever garbage Strath has been slamming down you?” Dimber asks, eyeing her as careful as the first day and breathing to match her; pacing her now that his first mark is gone.

“ Not dope, not nothing like that.” Embarrassed, Fly snips, “ I ain’t going out that way, never laid a hand on vein strippers and I’m never intending to.”

Leaning against the bar, she hisses in pain when the corner digs into her chest. Then leans back against it instead, huffing loudly. “ If I die, you stay away from the pit they roll me into.”

“ Now, is that any way to speak to a friend? After I cut you into that slice of pie and let you run with us?” Dimber chuckles leaning back in his chair, smiling but it not reaching past his lips. His eyes are hard and dark as a chunk of smooth stone.

“ That’d be a no, right?” Fly feels hot all over, lifts up the bottom hem of her shirt to fan air up her torso. Closing her own eyes and missing the way Dimber’s lock onto the slight roundness below her bellybutton. “ I’m not sorry, been feeling like I’m about to die, Dimber. And here you are trying to run a number on me if I didn’t know any better.”

He doesn’t answer one way or another. Just tells her, “ You need a hand to hold at the sawbones, eh? Didn't realize a tough bird like you was scared of a little doctoring. Fine then, let's hit the road.” He leaves a pile of coins next to his empty jar, nearly so clean it’s been licked, then they're off across town.

“ Should be a short trip, either I’m rad sick or no.” Fly mumbles.

Dimber agrees, not mentioning the trip is made longer from her heaving every fifteen minutes along the way.

Fly trusts Dimber to lead her, leans heavily on him for most of the journey, doesn’t look up from the dusty ground and her boots to notice this isn't the right way at all; they aren’t at the sick quarter.

When she’s inside the building, she realizes she’s too tired to run. Too wrung out and dehydrated to do anything but ask, “ Why?”

Dimber sighs when he walks her straight back, towards a hard looking woman in an apron, admits, “ Because, I was wrong. There is a shortage of ones like you, breeding and healthy.”

“What?” Fly feels like she’s swallowed a rock, even though her stomach is painfully empty.

“ You silly tart, don’t you get it? You’re in the family way; unlicensed and unknown until now. Can’t have us all popping them out willy nilly, otherwise we’ll all be starving, got to run a tight ship.” Dimber’s eye focuses on her, staring hard at her face like he’s trying to remember it. “ Damned shame, you’re a talent. But the reward for ones like you is worth more to us all... Don’t worry, it’ll go to a good family.”

“ No, nonononono- you can’t do this, you won’t.” She babbles, and tries to lurch out of his grip and only succeeds in throwing herself into the woman with the apron. “ I’m one of yours-”

Dimber’s voice is worn and low, “ No, you were an investment. And now I’ve found the best way for you to pay out. You knew what kind of man I was the first day we met, not my fault you ignored it because you didn't like the truth.”

Fly feels her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth, dry as leather. Her voice sticks in her throat.

‘ He’s right. He’s a cheat, a liar, and a con man.’ She finds the last bit of moisture in her body, the only bit that’s not a pile of sick somewhere along the way here-

She aims, spits, and watches it hit Dimber’s remaining eye. She stares hard at him, committing to memory the way his face wrinkles in disgust before she’s turned away. Her vision fuzzes at the edges, hearing things like she’s underwater or buried in blankets.

Fly is taken back, into a room that would be her home for the next ten months, a bed all her own, a wash basin, and four bare walls with a small window that’s too high up to even see out of. She spends her days walking the floor, thinking about the Omnium, how she’d never have gone the second time because lightning don't strike twice and you never get away easy _twice_ , and her own gullibility. How she bought so readily what another rounder was selling, then ended up sold herself.

They give her a mark on her hip, an insect like she is, to commemorate her time here, marking her for what she is. When she asked the woman in the apron said only two words,

“A survivor.”

The only prize aside from stretch marks, a bleeding cunt, and rags to stopper it. When she’s turned out it’s empty handed and with an empty body; she does the only thing that seems right.

Fly drinks alone. 


End file.
